Update: Addressing new level system questions and feedback

[alexonjourney]

The update is an absolute disaster. It is being forced on us from one moment to the next, and my subjective feeling is that there is virtually no one who will benefit from the update. In fact, there are countless professional sellers, not only here in the forum but also on Reddit, for example, who are being downgraded from Top Seller or Level 2 to Level 1 or even Level 0 and have absolutely no idea what they should improve, because the statement "Take care of customer satisfaction" is the most pointless thing I've ever read when I'm constantly getting tips and have a rating of 5.0 with over 500 ratings.
As a seller who has been active for over 4 years, I'm already used to having to deal with horrible changes every few months that negatively impact my work, but this is really a new level of disastrous work by the people in charge at Fiverr and I'm not surprised that Fiverr has lost over 90% of its value since its high in 2021 and has to constantly fire people. One can only hope that it wasn't the competent people who had to clear their desks, but updates like this suggest bad things.

[nikki_mills_vo]

4 minutes ago, arianelaurent said:

I cannot find it but either on this topic or the one before it, someone mentioned that they had contacted CS about this Review requirements/app issue and CS confirmed it was a glitch with the app, which meant that the communication wasn't registered. It was affecting the effective communication metric in this seller's gig score.

Thank you!

[leonormiserol]

4 hours ago, almostfauxreal said:

"I took a look at your account and see that the following Gigs' success scores negatively impact your overall success score: [GIG NAME $95] & [GIG NAME $300]. The key areas that require your attention are [Client satisfaction, On-schedule deliveries, Conflict-free orders] and [Communication]. "

This means I can ask support which of my orders are causing my low score?

[zerlina84]

9 minutes ago, nikki_mills_vo said:

Am I alone in receiving reminders to do things I've already done, or could this be the reason so many of us seem to be marked down on communication?

Somewhere in another post some of us reached the conclusion that YES, that’s another of many bugs that is probably affecting our communication score. Be sure to open the new order not only on the app but on desktop as well. I also get those freaking emails and my communication score is also low.

in conclusion, yes, we are paying for bugs that should have been fixed years ago.

Edited February 19 by zerlina84

[alexonjourney]

3 minutes ago, zerlina84 said:

Somewhere in another post some of us reached the conclusion that YES, that’s another of many bugs that is probably affecting our communication score. Be sure to open the new order not only on the app but on desktop as well. I also get those freaking emails and my communication score is also low.

in conclusion, yes, we are paying for bugs that should have been fixed years ago.

With this technical quality, you are all the more "pleased" that 20% is taken from you + 20% on tips + customer fees. With Fiverr you really get a "great" service for all the money.

[emmaki]

I think I speak for everyone when I say that we'd rather Fiverr fix the numerous bugs that inevitably impact the scores which impact our status and income on the platform, rather than introduce even more new bugs and glitches to the system in the name of transparency. 

I remember the app bug being mentioned too. I can't find it either. I've always told people not to use the app unless necessary, but from Reddit posters it is clear that there are quite a lot of sellers who try to conduct their entire business on the phone ("why can't I make a gig? I'm on mobile. What do you mean Fiverr doesn't allow you to make gigs on mobile? Wow, Fiverr is badword")

[visualstudios]

5 minutes ago, emmaki said:

there are quite a lot of sellers who try to conduct their entire business on the phone

That sounds like a nightmare. I can barely work on a computer with one screen (using 3 right now), imagine doing anything serious on a 5 inch display.

[nadiappp]

I'm so disappointed that my success score is ZERO and my gig's score is 8. CS says their team thoroughly reviewed it and that there is no discrepancy and the scores are correct. I've only seen one other case like this here on the forum and that seller's success score was subsequently. corrected.

Am I the only one with this problem?

The only reason that I can think as being the reason for this is the low number of completed orders in the past two years (i had "life" things going on), so maybe there was not enough data or not enough private reviews to be included in the SS calculation.

Edited February 19 by nadiappp
added screenshot

[alexonjourney]

7 minutes ago, emmaki said:

I think I speak for everyone when I say that we'd rather Fiverr fix the numerous bugs that inevitably impact the scores which impact our status and income on the platform, rather than introduce even more new bugs and glitches to the system in the name of transparency. 

I remember the app bug being mentioned too. I can't find it either. I've always told people not to use the app unless necessary, but from Reddit posters it is clear that there are quite a lot of sellers who try to conduct their entire business on the phone ("why can't I make a gig? I'm on mobile. What do you mean Fiverr doesn't allow you to make gigs on mobile? Wow, Fiverr is badword")

It is absolutely incomprehensible how Fiverr works. They would simply have to do nothing and those who do the work for them and those who pay for the work would be reasonably happy. Instead, they are constantly making the experience worse, creating stress for sellers and forcing them to constantly pester their customers for reviews to avoid being penalized by the poor systems and countless bugs.

[almostfauxreal]

20 minutes ago, leonormiserol said:

This means I can ask support which of my orders are causing my low score?

I didn't ask directly but seems like. I asked why there is such a discrepancy between the success score for two of my gigs where I had no cancellation and one where CS told me they remove it from the stats, still I had strong negative on those metrics. And then that's what they answered..
 

[pyxisstudio]

57 minutes ago, rehman_b said:

They dont suggest how to improve this or when the account will recover from low performance. All my gigs show 4 score. Did not understand what to do NEXT

Delete the Gigs.

[edigitalmarket]

Fiverr should acknowledge this new system is garbage and scrap it all together.

You have 100 clients, 95 are happy and don't bother with hidden reviews, 2 leave negative hidden reviews and you get a success score of 4.

This system is a nightmare for old sellers with lots of completed orders.

[catwriter]

38 minutes ago, emmaki said:

I've always told people not to use the app unless necessary, but from Reddit posters it is clear that there are quite a lot of sellers who try to conduct their entire business on the phone ("why can't I make a gig? I'm on mobile. What do you mean Fiverr doesn't allow you to make gigs on mobile? Wow, Fiverr is badword")

I remember someone who wanted to offer logo design service while working from the phone only. They wanted to use some app to create logos.

[donnovan86]

2 minutes ago, edigitalmarket said:

This system is a nightmare for old sellers with lots of completed orders.

It's clear that the main focus behind this review and leveling systems is to lower scores and not have everyone with 5 stars and level 2. Most of the active marketplace has that score/level, so it's difficult for buyers to pick someone. I can say for a fact that I tried to find some designers, only to find myself quitting because some of their sample designs were stolen from online sources, and almost everyone had the same rating. So I get why they made the change.

 

Ever since I saw this leveling system in January I was against it and I immediately told them it's unfair towards older sellers. However, I don't think they will change that much. They will definitely not scrap the system entirely, but I do hope they will address some of the bugs reported here, like customer support-canceled orders being taken into account for the succes score. 

It's unfortunate that now we will have to deal with even more metrics, and it's particularly annoying to be penalized for revisions and extensions. Many times, those things are outside of our control, and they come from incomplete requirements, for example.

I am curious about these webinars they are holding the next few days and next week as well. Hopefully they cover some of the questions that were repeated so many times. Ideally, they should make a new topic on the forum where they gather questions, and all the most common/popular ones are answered. 

Just now, catwriter said:

I remember someone who wanted to offer logo design service while working from the phone only. They wanted to use some app to create logos.

A lot of so called "logo designers" use AI or logo generators, and they have no design talent. I was looking for a logo and some designs for a project and I ended up getting only AI generated stuff. So I can tell you for a fact, as a client, I didn't get a handmade design, and I worked with 3 different sellers, different pricepoints either. At the end of the day, I had to use AI myself and try to figure things out, so yeah.. Similar thing to when I wanted a website designer years ago, he had an average pricepoint, I didn't go with the cheapest option. He made me wait for over a month, on the last day we agreed I would have the website he said he couldn't do it due to personal issues, but he wants me to pay for the work and a 5 star review for his efforts. Even if I got nothing in return. 

That's why I hope the new system will flush out bad sellers like this. I am not a frequent buyer on the platform, but the dozen or so experiences that I had were mostly negative. 

[leonormiserol]

6 minutes ago, donnovan86 said:

It's clear that the main focus behind this review and leveling systems is to lower scores and not have everyone with 5 stars and level 2. Most of the active marketplace has that score/level, so it's difficult for buyers to pick someone. I can say for a fact that I tried to find some designers, only to find myself quitting because some of their sample designs were stolen from online sources, and almost everyone had the same rating. So I get why they made the change.

 

Ever since I saw this leveling system in January I was against it and I immediately told them it's unfair towards older sellers. However, I don't think they will change that much. They will definitely not scrap the system entirely, but I do hope they will address some of the bugs reported here, like customer support-canceled orders being taken into account for the succes score. 

It's unfortunate that now we will have to deal with even more metrics, and it's particularly annoying to be penalized for revisions and extensions. Many times, those things are outside of our control, and they come from incomplete requirements, for example.

I am curious about these webinars they are holding the next few days and next week as well. Hopefully they cover some of the questions that were repeated so many times. Ideally, they should make a new topic on the forum where they gather questions, and all the most common/popular ones are answered. 

A lot of so called "logo designers" use AI or logo generators, and they have no design talent. I was looking for a logo and some designs for a project and I ended up getting only AI generated stuff. So I can tell you for a fact, as a client, I didn't get a handmade design, and I worked with 3 different sellers, different pricepoints either. At the end of the day, I had to use AI myself and try to figure things out, so yeah.. Similar thing to when I wanted a website designer years ago, he had an average pricepoint, I didn't go with the cheapest option. He made me wait for over a month, on the last day we agreed I would have the website he said he couldn't do it due to personal issues, but he wants me to pay for the work and a 5 star review for his efforts. Even if I got nothing in return. 

That's why I hope the new system will flush out bad sellers like this. I am not a frequent buyer on the platform, but the dozen or so experiences that I had were mostly negative. 

In that sense you are absolutely right, there are many sellers who actually steal work or use some fraudulent tool to deliver their work. But this new update is not helping to combat that type of behavior.

[strategist_ceo]

1 hour ago, webdeveloper991 said:

Still, my overall success score is at "8" .. God knows why.. How is that calculated?

removing your other gigs will help... apparently..

[emmaki]

It seems to be a young person thing (the "I only want to work on my phone" thing). I mean, you can technically make a whole online business using an app on your mobile phone only (see: Instagram, TikTok) and influencers on those platforms will quite happily tell you that they do this.

Which I find quite disingenuous, because while they do significant parts of their public-facing business on the phone, I bet the boring back office stuff is done on a laptop - or outsourced to someone who is doing it on a laptop.

It also seems to be the case that younger generations are not as good on a computer as, say, millennials are. I find this slightly bizarre as I always thought it would be as it was historically, that younger people were better at tech than their elders. 

However, appears to have been a  general regression across society. AI does not fill me with hope for a future full of smart people. To cite one example of a regression: it used to be that people would simply Google something if they didn't know something.

Now, they don't bother and ask other people to give them answers that they could look up on Google. If prodded about it, they are surprised that such a concept exists. For all the knowledge that we have at our fingertips with/without Google, it's not being accessed or used. r/Fiverr is a great example of the same 3 questions asked over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. 

So.... does this mean in a few years or decades, people won't even ask the AI helpbot implanted in their head the answer to questions and instead rely on other people to ask their implants? I mean, there will always be smart people who don't do this and learn stuff, but I'm talking about the majority of people here. The masses. 

I could just be getting old and complaining about how rubbish young people are though. That's a timeless hobby for the ages. Just think, a few decades from now, people will look at anyone my age and go "wow, they saw so much change... they lived before the internet and AI and smartphones AND they had to work, wow. The things they have seen" as if we all roamed the earth like some sort of bereft dinosaurs in search of a way to escape the boredom of not being entertained 1001% all of the time. 

Entropy, entropy, they've all got it entropy! 

[strategist_ceo]

I'm not pleased with the score of 8, as I can't remember any negative incidents with paying clients. My directness means many who approach me decide not to hire me. The ones who do know I'm always honest, even when delivering harsh truths.

I think some who might've thought I was rude have "reported" me... haha, that might explain why my score isn't 10, but just 8.

Edited February 19 by strategist_ceo

[cal5086]

None of the "sellers" who steal work and lie about their abilities are on here complaining about anything that I can see, it's just mostly sellers who have been on the site for years and have dedicated vast amounts of their time and energy to build up a client base.

I was having one of the best months in years on the site until this update hit, now my messages and orders have fallen off a cliff.

[emmaki]

I don't think the empty success scores have any impact at all. Most of my gigs look like this. 

[carminesannino]

15 minutes ago, donnovan86 said:

It's clear that the main focus behind this review and leveling systems is to lower scores and not have everyone with 5 stars and level 2. Most of the active marketplace has that score/level, so it's difficult for buyers to pick someone. I can say for a fact that I tried to find some designers, only to find myself quitting because some of their sample designs were stolen from online sources, and almost everyone had the same rating. So I get why they made the change.

 

Ever since I saw this leveling system in January I was against it and I immediately told them it's unfair towards older sellers. However, I don't think they will change that much. They will definitely not scrap the system entirely, but I do hope they will address some of the bugs reported here, like customer support-canceled orders being taken into account for the succes score. 

It's unfortunate that now we will have to deal with even more metrics, and it's particularly annoying to be penalized for revisions and extensions. Many times, those things are outside of our control, and they come from incomplete requirements, for example.

I am curious about these webinars they are holding the next few days and next week as well. Hopefully they cover some of the questions that were repeated so many times. Ideally, they should make a new topic on the forum where they gather questions, and all the most common/popular ones are answered. 

A lot of so called "logo designers" use AI or logo generators, and they have no design talent. I was looking for a logo and some designs for a project and I ended up getting only AI generated stuff. So I can tell you for a fact, as a client, I didn't get a handmade design, and I worked with 3 different sellers, different pricepoints either. At the end of the day, I had to use AI myself and try to figure things out, so yeah.. Similar thing to when I wanted a website designer years ago, he had an average pricepoint, I didn't go with the cheapest option. He made me wait for over a month, on the last day we agreed I would have the website he said he couldn't do it due to personal issues, but he wants me to pay for the work and a 5 star review for his efforts. Even if I got nothing in return. 

That's why I hope the new system will flush out bad sellers like this. I am not a frequent buyer on the platform, but the dozen or so experiences that I had were mostly negative. 

If you want, take a look at my services. I went through schools and art academy for my talent, brutally abused here on Fiverr (I regret choosing this platform). The crazy thing, is that this system favors the clever copy and paste, and harms the experts. Most of my orders go into revisions, because for the most part, they are professionals looking for a reasonably priced expert, so they often send orders into revisions for days. I cannot believe how absurd this is. I will go back to work in agencies, last year I turned down an important one to continue on Fiverr. Lol, what a joke...

[egaylord]

57 minutes ago, alexonjourney said:

It is absolutely incomprehensible how Fiverr works. They would simply have to do nothing and those who do the work for them and those who pay for the work would be reasonably happy. Instead, they are constantly making the experience worse, creating stress for sellers and forcing them to constantly pester their customers for reviews to avoid being penalized by the poor systems and countless bugs.

Completely true. Every new system that they introduce is full of bugs. My earnings page has looked like this since the new earnings page was introduced and I'm just gaslighted by CS "we assure you nothing's happening to your money". And, my stats are always weirdly off, so hearing that the app has something to do with it makes a lot of sense

[donnovan86]

4 minutes ago, strategist_ceo said:

I think some who might've thought I was rude have "reported" me... haha, that might explain why my score isn't 10, but just 8.

Same here man, I had only ideal reviews for months and despite that my success manager told me I had a low buyer satisfaction rate. I did have 3-4 people over the span of 8 months that didn't review their order (aside from regulars that never review orders anyway). And from them, 2 came back for more. So either buyers leave private reviews randomly, or some people leave great reviews out of courtesy and they are unhappy. But if they are unhappy, why wouldn't they say something?

To be honest, I have more than half a dozen paused services that haven't been active for years, I was curious about their success score, but I assume activating those will only lower the success score, am I right?

[zerlina84]

1 minute ago, carminesannino said:

last year I turned down an important one to continue on Fiverr.

Honestly, we should be very careful when chosing these platforms as our livelihoods. Fiverr is my main source of income, but what if their servers explode or something? I'm exagerating obviously, but it's pretty dangerous to do what I do (and many others do). That thing about putting all our eggs in one basket or however the saying goes...

[emmaki]

("can't you translate?") 

No. You're a walking bad review, mate.